


Night, Starless; Velvet; Void

by pipistrelle



Series: Locked Tomb Flufftober Prompts [7]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, F/F, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers, Pining, mentions of canon-typical child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26455990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: What she wanted to say was: you don’t know shit about Harrow’s eyes.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Series: Locked Tomb Flufftober Prompts [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914445
Comments: 17
Kudos: 167





	Night, Starless; Velvet; Void

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was “monochromatic”.
> 
> Takes place more or less immediately following “Harrow the Ninth”.

It was the worst time-out Gideon had ever been in, which was saying a _lot_. Gideon’s time-outs had usually consisted of days at a time locked in a pitch-dark freezing haunted cell in the guts of Drearburh, and that was when Crux was feeling merciful. When he was in a mood he’d added such delights as half rations, no rations, rattle-throated choruses of chanting tomb nuns, and (courtesy of Harrow) irate skeletons with varying unusual numbers of fists.

Gideon would have traded this time-out trapped on God’s station in Harrow’s body for the worst of Crux’s elaborate revenges. Probably because Harrow had been alive and well then to torment her with skeletons.

And none of her Drearburh punishments had involved Ianthe Tridentarius. Really, she’d never known how good she had it.

God had locked them in a relatively undestroyed conference room and gone off to do God things — probably finding more defenseless necromancers to beat up and betray. He had given them tea and biscuits, possibly out of a misplaced sense of fatherly concern. Ianthe had toyed languidly with hers and left it to decompose in her cup of cold tea. Gideon had eaten her biscuit, then had found the box of biscuits in a cupboard and was miserably working her way through them, because Harrow needed biomass and Gideon needed some kind of sensation that didn’t make her want to cry until her face fell off. Which she couldn’t even do, because it was Harrow’s face.

She wanted a nap and she wanted to fight something. She wanted to fight _everything_. She didn’t know what she wanted. That was a lie, she knew exactly what she wanted; she wanted off this station filled with immortal bastards and dead rotting wasp-monsters, and she wanted her pointy awful necromancer back. Not necessarily in that order.

Ianthe abruptly pushed her tea away and laid her golden arm down on the table with a _click_. “I’m so sick of looking at you,” she sneered. Gideon stifled the urge to punch her by stuffing another biscuit in her (Harrow’s) mouth. Then she had to spend thirty seconds very pointedly not thinking about Harrow’s mouth, and Ianthe was talking again.

“Those eyes are _horrid_ ,” she said. “As if Harry’s face wasn’t bad enough on its own, now she looks like she’s got radioactive conjunctivitis.” Gideon had forgotten the peculiar rise and fall of Ianthe’s syllables that made anyone else’s sneer sound positively friendly by comparison. She wished she could forget it again. “In all the stories, Ninth necromancers had eyes like coal-dust, and shadows, and that sort of thing. Are there other freaks like you down there, or are everyone’s eyes like Harrow’s? Must be so convenient, to match all the décor. Corona and I had a terrible time on the Fifth, their color schemes clashed with ours awfully. Made me look like a toad.”

Gideon realized that this probably was Ianthe trying to be friendly — showing an interest, inviting Gideon into the sort of backhanded barbs she and Harrow probably traded all the time. There was definitely a rational part of her that understood that. It did not make her want to punch Ianthe any less. At this point all that was stopping her was the knowledge that Harrow’s tiny fists would probably break, which would amuse Ianthe terribly.

What she wanted to say was: _fuck off, Tridentarius, like Babs didn’t give you ocular indigestion. At least I don’t make Harrow’s face look like the world’s worst lava lamp._

What she wanted to say was: _Yeah, cause one shade of black’s just like every other, right? You’ve never been in the pit of Drearburh with Crux chasing you, when you had to tell tomb-shadow from tunnel-shadow or you’d get a bone shoved into your spleen. You’ve never spent three goddamn hours trying to make sure your black robes and black shirts and black trousers all_ matched _, because if you didn’t you’d get a bone shoved in your spleen. No one’s probably ever shoved a bone in your spleen, and it shows. You don’t know shit about black, is my point. You don’t know how regular black paint changes to red-black with blood sweat under it. You don’t know how black hair gets darker when it’s wet._

What she wanted to say was: _Eight months on this wasp graveyard trying to get in Harrow’s pants, and you’ve never even looked at her eyes, not_ once _, not really. You don’t notice when they go from rage-black to sad-black. You don’t know that sometimes they’re incandescent black, usually right before she’s about to shove something horrible into your spleen, because she never tried to do that to you because she_ needed _you, which is a level of shittiness even she never deserved. You don’t know jack shit about Harrow’s eyes. You don’t know how soft they were, shadows in the dark under that bone, the last time she looked at me — before I —_

What she wanted to say was: _No one’s eyes are like Harrow’s. Not a single person anywhere._

And: _I hope you clash with every décor you’re in for the rest of your immortal life, you conniving heartless tin-plated bone-toad._

What she said was, “Fuck off, Tridentarius, like Babs didn’t give you ocular indigestion. At least I don’t make Harrow’s face look like the world’s worst lava lamp.”

“Oh, never mind,” Ianthe sighed in disgust. “I hope Teacher can fix you, or this is going to be a long myriad.”

Gideon ate another biscuit, in the senseless hope that it might make her (Harrow’s) chest hurt less. 

It didn’t. Maybe the next one would.

In the meantime she stared out the window, miserably, as though looking for something, and didn’t find it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title category is: things that are compared to Ninth necromancers’ eyes in romance novels.


End file.
